The British National Health Service (NHS) is set to become a world leader in using AI to health care throughout the nation.
The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced that £250m will be spent on boosting the role of AI within the NHS.
Matt also stated that
""The power of artificial intelligence to improve medicine, to save lives, to improve the way treatments are done, that power is enormous,"
"In this country, we've got the opportunity to be one of the leading countries in the world at using this new technology."
Applications of AI
A.I will have vast applications in medicine. Such as usage in imaging and radiology where
"AI is being hailed as one of the greatest tools to come to radiology since the x-ray machine".
Greatly increasing accurate diagnoses of diseases, whilst reducing waiting times for results.
It will also assist doctors such as the following picture of X-ray of a hand, with automatic calculation of bone age by computer software.
In Drug discovery, such as an AI program called SAM (Search Algorithm for Ligands) which was used to develop a vaccine.
“This confirmed that SAM not only had the ability to identify good drugs but in fact had come up with better human immune drugs than currently exist,” Nikolai said. “So we then took these drugs created by SAM into development with animal testing to confirm their ability to boost influenza vaccine effectiveness.”
Petrovsky said this potentially shortens the normal drug discovery and development process by decades and saves hundreds of millions of dollars.
A.I will be used in medical 'drug' research making the development process faster and cheaper. As well as improving the chances of a drug making it to market, which currently is Only about 13% of drugs that start the process make it to the drugstore.
There's great potential for A.I in medicine, I believe the recent investment of £250m for A.I and the NHS will be start of a medial revolution. Potentially far greater than the introduction of the Internet. However, no one can tell what the future will bring. But I hope that this time, A.I will help humanity and improve our quality of life.
Who knows, it could be the start of a new era be it benevolent or Skynet's cousin.
What are your thoughts about A.I being used in the health sector, is it too early and what concerns do you have?
Sources:
AI Startups See Opportunities to Disrupt Medical Imaging
https://datacenterfrontier.com/ai-startups-see-opportunities-to-disrupt-medical-imaging/
Australian researchers just released the world's first AI-developed vaccine and it could prevent another horror flu season
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-researchers-just-released-the-worlds-first-ai-developed-vaccine-and-it-could-prevent-another-horror-flu-season-2019-7
NHS to set up national artificial intelligence lab
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49270325